By now everyone has heard that Amazon plans to deliver our books, toys and coffee pods via unmanned drones sometime in the future.
The service Jeff Bezos plans to call “Amazon Prime Air” proves that the CEO of the Internet giant just may be the most mad marketing genius of our time.
The service is still in development and, of course, is many, many years off. In his widely shared “60 Minutes” interview, Bezos admitted that the service couldn’t take flight until at least 2015, because first the FAA needs to update its laws.
But no one heard that. All they heard was “drones” and “delivery.” And did we mention that this hit the media on Cyber Monday?
Are you starting to notice that Amazon is in the news (and not just the industry news) on a pretty regular basis? First, Bezos announces that he’s buying The Washington Post, the newspaper that brought us the Pentagon Papers and Watergate. Then, the company commits to Sunday delivery, partnering with that distinctly pre-digital dinosaur, the Unites States Postal Service.
Now, Amazon is working on sending us our shampoo and other sundries via literal air mail.
It’s clear that Bezos is a master of marketing, a man who understands and capitalizes on the zeitgiest to ensure his brand is viewed favorably in the public eye.
You’ll note that the drone story comes on the heels of an investigative report on the not-so-favorable working conditions in Amazon’s UK warehouses—a story that got virtually no play in the press, unlike the drone story.
We often talk about branding in the abstract. What does brand perception really mean?
The next time you and your team are embroiled in a philosophical discussion about the value of brand image, all you need to do to win the debate is to point to the mad genius of Jeff Bezos and how closely the astonishing success of Amazon relies on his ability to put his finger on what we want, before we even know we want it.
